Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Workers, and Xbox Teams Are Eligible

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, which is roughly a quarter of the whole company. Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced it in a note to staff on Monday, and Microsoft confirmed the number to TechCrunch (TechCrunch). Bloomberg reports that Xbox is one of the participating teams, along with Windows, Copilot and Finance (Bloomberg).

For anyone who follows Xbox, this is one more hard headline in a very rough year.

Who can take the Microsoft buyout?

The offer covers employees at vice president level and below on select teams in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom. Some groups, like data center staff and sales and marketing, are left out. Eligible employees were set to get an email with the details on Monday, and the terms are similar to Microsoft's standard severance (TechCrunch).

Coleman's note calls it a "Voluntary Exit Offer," a way for people already thinking about leaving to go now with support. She also called the program new for Microsoft and said the company will learn from it. Microsoft had about 223,000 employees at the end of June, so 60,000 works out to about 27% of the company.

Why is Microsoft doing this now?

The reporting frames it as a cost cut tied to Microsoft's push into AI, and as a way to shrink headcount without another round of mass layoffs (TechCrunch). Microsoft tried a smaller version earlier this year. It offered buyouts to about 8,750 retirement-age employees, and Bloomberg reports more than 30% of them accepted.

No report so far ties the offer to a specific game, studio closure or change in Xbox's plans (Shattered). Microsoft hasn't said how many Xbox employees are eligible or how many people it expects to accept.

What does this mean for Xbox?

It's hard to read this without thinking about everything else going on at Xbox lately. This week, IGN reported that Microsoft is looking for another studio to help Arkane Lyon finish Marvel's Blade (IGN). Xbox has been through several rounds of studio cuts and cancelled projects over the past two years, so every new staffing story hits fans and developers hard.

My read is that a voluntary offer is better than surprise layoffs, because people get to choose. Still, when a quarter of a company gets an exit offer, the teams left behind usually end up doing more with less. The real test is what Xbox looks like in six months, and whether the games on its schedule still ship on time. We'll keep an eye on which studios are affected as more details come out (fingers crossed for Blade).

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Header image is Building 92 on Microsoft's Redmond campus, photo by Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.